55 - Massimo Pigliucci - A Modern Stoic

Massimo’s books include Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture (Syntheses in Ecology and Evolution) (2001): https://www.amazon.com/Phenotypic-Plasticity-Syntheses-Evolution-2001-07-17/dp/B01K17YKGQ Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology, with co-author Jonathan Kaplan (2006): https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo4100801.html Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk (2010): https://www.amazon.com/Nonsense-Stilts-Tell-Science-Bunk-dp-0226667863/dp/0226667863/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid= and How to be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (2017): https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Stoic-Ancient-Philosophy/dp/0465097952 He is the co-author, with Gregory Lopez of Live Like A Stoic: 52 Exercises for Cultivating a Good Life (2019): https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1116985/live-like-a-stoic/9781846045967.html He is the co-editor, with Maarten Boudry, of Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo15996988.html You can find Massimo’s Letter conversation with David Sloan Wilson here: https://letter.wiki/conversation/34 And my article about this conversation here: https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/10/human-cultural-evolution-a-letter-exchange You can find Massimo’s Letter conversaion with Philip Goff here: https://letter.wiki/conversation/277 For more on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/ On Stoic Week: https://modernstoicism.com/about-stoic-week/ Follow Massimo on Twitter: @mpigliucci Write to Open Letters at Letter here: https://letter.wiki/OpenLetters/conversations Write to me: https://letter.wiki/IonaItalia/conversations Further Notes Derren Brown, Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine (2016) My essay on Stoicism: https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/21/in-praise-of-stoicism-derren-browns-happy-book-review/ For Karl Popper on the demarcation problem see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#ProbDema Larry Laudan on the demarcation problem: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-7055-7_6 For Wittgenstein on the definition of a game see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#LangGameFamiRese The SETI institute: https://www.seti.org/ Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Selection Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2001): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114577/the-mating-mind-by-geoffrey-miller/ Richard Lewontin, 1929– Lawrence Kraus, A Universe from Nothing (2012) Massimo, Maarten Boudry, Lawrence Krauss and Daniel Dennett on the Limits of Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRzfCemXYLc For Wilfred Sellars on the stereoscopic vision of science see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/#8 Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel (1941): https://maskofreason.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-library-of-babel-by-jorge-luis-borges.pdf Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010) Massimo’s review of The Moral Landscape: https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-02-02/#feature Ayn Rand’s objectivism: https://aynrand.org/ideas/overview/ The Discourses of Epictetus: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.html Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations: http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html Seneca, Of Anger: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Of_Anger/Book_I For more on Chryssipus: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chrysippus Timestamps 3:47 The demarcation problem, the difference between science and pseudoscience 17:26 What made Massimo change fields from biology to philosophy 21:45 What is the relationship between philosophy and science? 38:32 Science and ethics 45:59 The appeal of Stoicism 57:17 Stoic practices 1:11:31 The Stoic fork/dichotomy of control 1:23:11 Free will 1:34:00 The misrepresentation of Stoicism as repression of emotion 1:43:18 The lessons of the pandemic